


Unreachable Message

by MiChiAzalie



Series: Elegy For A Nameless Flower [2]
Category: Fate/EXTRA
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Male and Female Hakuno, Telepathic Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:27:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27827503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiChiAzalie/pseuds/MiChiAzalie
Summary: There's been something missing for as long as Hakuno could remember; one of the few first memories she has was that of crying for something lost, and sometimes, when the moon shone in through the windows, whenever she caught a glimpse of its reflection on any surface, she found herself instinctively turning towards it, wishing to lay somewhere in the starlight, finding peace in someone's embrace.--With his eyes closed, he instinctively opens his arms to embrace the moon. As he does, he can almost feel the anchor he knows should be there —only there wasn’t anything physical for him to wrap his arms around, and only the sickening feeling of absence remained.
Relationships: Gilgamesh | Caster/Kishinami Hakuno, Gilgamesh/Kishinami Hakuno
Series: Elegy For A Nameless Flower [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2026984
Comments: 5
Kudos: 33





	Unreachable Message

Memories are tricky things.

If she were to be asked what was her earliest memory, Hakuno wouldn’t know what to answer. In attempting to recall past events, Hakuno was never certain which one came first; if the distorted memory of being hand in hand with her brother in the innocence of their childhood, that of being swept away by a man bathed in gold with a promise of a new life, or cradling something fragile and precious in her arms. Sometimes Hakuno wasn't certain if any of it was real or if she had just made everything up to fill in the blank spaces in her treacherous memory.

But if there was something she knew with certainty, it was that there's always been something missing for as long as she could remember -which admittedly, wasn't much. When the boy that she couldn’t at first recognize as her own twin brother swept her up into a painfully tight embrace when she woke up in a hospital, she remembered crying for something lost.

Sometimes, when the moon shone in through the windows, whenever she caught a glimpse of its reflection on any surface, she found herself instinctively turning towards it. Inexplicably, the sight of it made something tug inside her, trying to remind her of something, but time marched on, inescapable, unavoidable, and memories softened until they became a blur; nothing but a distant echo of a life that was left behind, steadily becoming somewhat less painful to think about. However, no matter what, there was always something missing. The remainder of a loss still haunted her like an undesirable pest, and if she though hard enough, she could almost feel it; the memory of a warm embrace, a voice whispering her name in the darkness, a lingering scent blotting her pillows like a sad love song, asking her to go back.

The doctors told her this was a natural response to trauma, but even still, there was a lingering part of her telling her it was something deeper, more insidious, than just post traumatic shock. When she was brought back home after being discharged, she soon stopped trying to remember the missing parts of her childhood; she wished she could, because she knew it would make her twin happy, knowing that she didn’t forget all about him, but she couldn’t; like most of her memories, that part of her life had become a blank space.

The memory of what happened to her back on that day was unreachable, nothing but a clouded gray haze she didn't like to think about, but there was a certain missing piece, one that never stopped hurting no matter how much she wished to ignore, and when she tried to remember, every once in a while when she indulged in the absurd thought that she could actually bring herself to remember, she felt out of breath, as if her heart forgot how to beat.

Relearning to love her brother and to reclaim her life as it once was… that got easier after a while, but trying to piece together the shards of her more distant memories never did, so after several failed attempts she simply stopped trying, the answer hidden some place way too deep within her mind, lost amongst the vaporous memories of her past.

Otherwise, it was an idyllic life, the one she lived.

One night, as they stayed their summer break on some relative’s house on some coastal location away from the overcrowded city, she woke with a sudden start, feeling distraught that the other side of the bed was empty. Hakuno tried to shake away the confusion that arose when one woke up too fast, and looked outside the window of her bedroom. There was no clock inside her room, so she couldn’t tell what time it was, but a quick glance at the dark sky told her it must have been somewhere around midnight.

After several failed attempts at going back to sleep, turning and turning but never able to let exhaustion claim her, she kicked the bedsheets off of her and pushed out of the bed. While the days were still warm, she wasn’t about to risk it, so stumbling a little in the darkness of her room with only the pale light of the moon to guide her steps, she found a cardigan that she could pull on over her pajamas, and quietly left her room with a small cloth bag and a flashlight.

The whole house was in darkness, the rest of its inhabitants already in deep sleep, and the only lights she had to guide herself through the corridors were those from the full moon through the windows and that of the flashlight, but neither one of them was very reassuring; the flashlight only offered a paltry orange glow, and the moon’s strong glow seeping through the windows made Hakuno feel uneasy for reasons she couldn’t bring herself to fully understand.

All the way from the house to the seaside nearby, the moon watched her march into the woods. She wandered through the darkness with only the flashlight on hand, guided by its glow and that of the scent of salt in the air until the ground beneath her shoes was no longer made of hard pebbles and moist grass anymore, but soft and still faintly warm.

There was no other sound but that of her own breathing and the ocean’s waves breaking at the shore. The midnight breeze was pleasantly warm against her cheeks and the smell of saline water felt like a blessing compared to the miasma of gasoline that surrounded the city. Hakuno inhaled and exhaled deeply, taking in the smell of this remnant of nature only five minutes away from the place she’s had to relearn to call her home, and was suddenly reminded how many times she wished she could smell something other than antiseptic back when she was under observation.

She took a moment to gaze upon the night sky. It was a clear night, so there were countless stars stretching over the sky. Hakuno couldn’t help but think that what she really sought was to lay somewhere in that starlight, with the moonlight making a path for her across the sea to the stars. Hakuno knew that the world where she should be in was _that way_ ; and that at the end of that path there would be someone at the other side to embrace her and make her whole again. And it was so easy, really; if she spread her arms to encircle the moon, it was easy to picture wrapping her arms around someone else, imagine feeling the soft strands of hair as they tangle around her fingers, and the warmth of skin against skin as she finds peace in his embrace.

But there’s anything of that here. Just the vast body of that sea staring back at her, black and cold. She stared into the great expanse of ocean water as waves lapped at her now bare feet, her shoes laying somewhere close by if the need arose for her to put them back on, and wondered just how far from home she really was.

Within the small bag that she carried on her hand there were smooth stones that she had taken from the courtyard’s garden. She then picked a calm spot to relax by, close to the shore, using the smooth stones to skip across the surface of the water as a way to pass the time, watching the moon reach its zenith in the sky.

She drew her arm back and hurled one forward, sending it skipping across the sea. Ripples spread out from each of the places where the stone hit the water, lasting for six skips in total before sinking into the bottom of the sea.

Another stone was soon in the grip of her small hands, and then released it to lightly skim the mirrored surface of the sea, but this one only lasted for three skips before plummeting suddenly into it, sinking quickly to the bottom to join the others she had thrown.

She shrugged and reached for another but was forced to pause when she felt someone approaching, the sound of sand squishing beneath someone’s weight as they moved suddenly making her alert.

She only needed but one brief glance to confirm the newcomer's identity to let herself sigh in mild relief, then picked up a new stone and tossed it at the sea. This one lasted for six skips before coming to rest.

“You're getting pretty good at that," said her brother as he walked up to stand next to her. “Mind if I join?”

She rested her hands on the sand and looked up to him, and for a moment, when she saw the light of the moon shining on his brown eyes, she felt— recognition, as well as relief. _Salvation_. Even if she couldn’t remember her own brother all that well, even if everything about him was a black smudge of ink on a white canvas, seeing him always felt like finding a familiar face after hours and hours of wandering in circles without knowing the way back home.

“What the hell are you even doing _here,_ ” she asked, looking up at him with a deep frown. She didn’t even make it sound like a question.

Then, brown-gold eyes turned toward her, and they glinted with mischief.

"Oh, don't give me that. I could be asking the same from you,” the boy replied. “Which, by the by, I'm about to do: why, _why_ did you even leave your room this late at night, anyway?” he asked as incredulously as someone who looked like they hadn’t had a full-night’s rest could.

“Well, can't you see? Insomnia is a bitch, and I'm trying to find new ways to tire myself out. Besides, the view here is nice, don't you think?" she asked, motioning to the moon and the silvery path of its light reflecting on the dark water.

If there was something that she had re-learned ever since she had been discharged, it was that, somehow, the two of them were eerily attuned to each other, and because of that, when his mouth parted into a small silent ‘o’ as he took in the sight of the moon, Hakuno felt it inside of her that her brother, too, ached with the remnants of a distant memory they left behind.

“…So is this really what’s brought you out here, taking your anger out on an innocent sea? _The moon_?” then he sighed. “…Why can’t we have normal hobbies like normal kids our age do? Whatever happened to drinking? Parties? Internet? Why, of all things, _this_? It’s annoying.”

She shot a scowl at him before tossing another stone across the water, sending it skipping seven times, distorting the moonlight’s reflection on the water as it did, but then she shook her head. She wasn’t actually angry at him.

“People have looked at the moon for thousands of years, you know; it’s not nearly as strange as you make it sound,” she mumbled again, turning to look to her twin who stood a little further away from her, eyes closed in thought. Then, one of his eyes opened, followed by the other, deep brown irises glinting in light amber as one slender brow rose in question, and she continued. “And besides, it… feels good, in a strange sort of way," she said dreamily, looking back up at the moon again and its cool celestial light of silver. “It’s calm… and nostalgic.”

“Yeah… yeah, it is,” he conceded, and then he went silent for a while, watching the satellite with attentive eyes, obviously in thought.

She threw another stone while she basked in the companiable silence, this one faltering and sinking nearly immediately. A regretful sigh left her lips, then she returned her gaze to him, identical brown eyes meeting each other. He frowned a little before speaking again.

"We shouldn't be doing this, should we?" Her brother said, sounding slightly guilty.

"Why not?" Hakuno retorted with another question of her own, sounding genuinely puzzled.

"Well… for one thing, it might make our parents worry about us," he trailed off, before sitting down next to her. The sand immediately started to cling into his pajamas and he made a grimace of discomfort.

“It’s not like we’re wandering too far outside,” she retorted, and then her expression turned into something that could only be described as _conniving_. “And it’s not like there’s anyone here who’s going to tell them, is there?”

He grinned sheepishly and scratched the back of his head. “I guess not,” he replied quickly, and was bombarded with melodious giggles that soon melted away into silence.

He reached out to take a stone from her bag, hurled it forward and then made a face when it only skipped two times. They stayed like that for quite some time, making idle conversation, and they would have stayed like that some more time had he not started humming under his breath something teasingly familiar.

Feeling something amiss, she turned her face up to him again, and it was when she turned her gaze up to him that she saw her brother giving the moon’s reflection a strange look that was just begging for her to inquire him further on it.

“What?”

“Hm? Oh, nothing,” he retorted quickly, looking away, gaze trained once more on some undefined point on the horizon, but she still couldn't understand why he looked so troubled all of a sudden.

Hakuno frowned at him. “No, come on, that’s not fair; you were about to say something, so say it.”

Her brother fidgeted.

“It’s nothing, it’s just,” he smiled sheepishly, and then asked, with a strange shine to his eyes, “…There's something that has been nagging at me for a while. It's silly, but… do you actually believe in the myth that twins were originally just half the soul of another?"

As she tried to process what she’s heard from him, she saw him frowning and chewing his lip, something she’s never ever seen him do before.

The question threw her off balance. She went… blank, for a while, thinking of that.

Hakuno cocked an eyebrow.

“So… like a soul unintentionally separated? …Huh. You’re awfully pensive tonight.”

It was an old myth Hakuno couldn’t remember where she heard it from. Perhaps school, most probably.

“Yeah… something like that.”

She made a humming noise but did not answer him, still pondering on that. Unlike other twins, their similarities stretched not only in their physical attributes, but towards their thinking as well. Sometimes Hakuno got scared; they were so much alike in so many ways that people began to regard them as one person, even going so far as to call them by the same name; each half ceasing to exist without the other.

The two of them really looked hauntingly similar; it was a goddamn miracle that they couldn’t read their thoughts or finish their sentences like an old married couple.

Hakuno laughed when he pouted at her nonchalance. He could be so serious sometimes that it bordered on ridiculous.

"Well, I guess you could say that every person is born with a twin, only people call it by some other name." And just looking a tad too devious for her own good, she added, “…Although it would be a real pity to be stuck with you and your terrible cooking for all eternity,” she joked.

He gaped at her in mock-offense, his hands clutching at his heart. “I’m not going to cook for you anymore.”

Hakuno made a sound of fake dismay as she took another stone in her hands, carefully passing her fingertips along the flat surface before throwing it to the ocean with all her might, the stone skipping a few times before disappearing under the bottom. “Oh, boo-hoo, whatever will I do now without Hayato’s undercooked noodles and insipid miso soup?”

“Alright, this is it; your nightly-snack privileges are rescinded. I’m not sneaking any more pop tarts at 2AM for you from now on."

Hakuno stopped her stone-throwing entertainment for a moment, and stared back at him. “I know you. You’re lying.”

“Believe what you want.”

Her brother’s eyes remained resolute.

And then she looked appalled.

“Oh come on! I was kidding!” Hakuno balked, spreading her arms helplessly, but his teasing grin never wavered as he playfully ruffled her brown hair, and she reached a hand out to playfully pinch his cheek in retaliation. 

He gave her a half-hearted glare. “I cannot believe it. You’re literally twelve.”

She punched his shoulder once, then twice.

“Shut it.”

“Then stop hitting me, your royal insufferableness,” he grunted then, wincing.

If anyone looked at them from afar right now and watched the both of them go on and on, they would probably say ‘you two must be idiots’ tiredly, and there wouldn’t be anything that Hakuno could say in their defense other than hanging her head in silent agreement.

It's almost like nothing's changed, though almost everything has.

She’s not sure if he’s aware of this, but throughout the year and a half they had been reunited, sort of, he had become the closest to a home she would ever hope to find here, in spite of that other part of herself who, ever since the accident, has shared existence with her and has sort of become a constant, insistent echo inside her mind, rejecting the things Hakuno had embraced as her new life, like the people who called themselves her parents, the house near the beachside, the penthouse at the city, the school she started attending to, the people she now called her friends, and even her own brother -plaguing every single one of her thoughts with an overpowering sense of homesickness, strange to pinpoint but ever-present.

But she knows, there’s a certainty tugging at her heartstrings; the home that that other version of herself longs to return to has long since been surrendered to memory, and now that it’s gone her brother has become her new northern star.

“You know," and once he was settled and had finished mussing her hair in retaliation, she continued, whispering softly, "…we don't have eternity, but as long as we’re together, there is nothing to worry about, and…” she broke off to laugh a little, “…well, you might be a pretty terrible cook, but I guess I’m not _totally_ traumatized,” to which her brother only rolled his eyes, offering no response, and they both fell silent again, returning once more to their thoughts.

They’re quiet for a good minute, skimming stone after stone together, and then-

“I think I understand now, why we're twins.”

She skimmed another smooth stone as she listened, her eyes glimmering with something unspoken. It skipped three times and then it was sucked under the gentle waves, its shadowy shape slowly stolen from view.

At her silence, her brother continued.

“…It’s because this world is too lonely for just one soul to take. There's too much… cruelness. Too much loneliness.”

 _We exist in this universe together so that we can experience the pleasure we would otherwise never feel by our own_ , an intrusive, strangely familiar thought made its way into her mind.

She didn’t dare voice it. Instead-

“You _really_ are pensive tonight. That got depressing and fast" she noted.

But her brother only snorted mockingly at that.

Nonetheless, his reasoning resonated within her more than she would like to admit, and she had no idea what a meaningful response to that might really be. Then again, and just like that little voice inside of her, always tugging at her to reach for the moon, she didn’t think there was an answer that could be given that would be right enough to satisfy any of them. Perhaps, even, Hayato wasn’t looking for an answer, but even so, Hakuno felt compelled to give him one.

“I hate…” her expression clouded, unsure how she meant to approach the subject. “…not being able to remember you. Or much of anything, really. I hate listening to you go on and on about things I will never remember, I hate having a childhood I will never be able to care enough to miss, and at the same time I hate not being able to fully forget,” there was silence again, and then Hakuno continued, carefully swallowing a lump in her throat. “I hate it all. We're all so fucking unnecessarily complex. It’s not fair.”

Her brother stared at her like he was surprised by her sudden burst of emotions. However, he didn’t mock her for being overly emotional.

“No,” her brother said, nodding. "You're right." He casted another look at the moon and then sighed, his gaze returning back to her. "It isn't fair. But then, is anything?"

And perhaps just then her brother sensed some of that unease within her, because mere moments later he snaked an arm around her shoulders, and brought her to him in an awkward yet heartfelt embrace, with his other arm circling around her waist; the gesture meant a lot, coming from him. She willingly leant back into his embrace.

Perhaps the people who constantly mistook one for the other were onto something, after all; they were really both the same, Hakuno thought in dismay, a sudden sadness washing over her like ocean waves. The two of them were trying to put back together shattered pieces of themselves even if they might never make a whole again.

“Memories are nice and all, but… they are just that; _memories_. Nothing lasts forever. We have to get what we can before the winds change.”

At the edge of the horizon where sea and moon met as the later made its ascent to the heavens, she had expected to find solace -and perhaps the one thing that would make her whole again. Instead, though, she was hand in hand with a person perhaps just as broken if not more than she was, with more questions than answers.

He touched her cheek and smiled a little.

“…and there's nothing wrong with making the best of a bad situation, is there?”

All this time, she thought she was the one out of the two of them reaching out for something missing, that she never considered that the sentiment could be shared, and that by focusing so much on a stray thought, she was neglecting other things that were just as precious and as important, and in realizing, a sudden wave of helplessness rose up within her.

She started crying before she could help herself. She cried quietly in the arms of her brother, cried for the forgotten childhood she would never remember, for everything they lost and for the years they've spent alone. It was wrong and it was unfair, because her fingers would forever ache with that ghost of a memory, never able to recall why, and that sense of melancholy would always prevail. She felt only half there, while the other half of her was somewhere else. Someone took something from her, even if she can't remember she’s sure of it, and now she is forever lost. For years still, for eternity even, she'll stay lost, hopelessly searching for her way back home and never going anywhere.

“Hey, you big dummy, why are you crying?” he asked quietly, a discordant note in his voice sounding like a piano breaking a string.

With a sound that fell between a wry laugh and a sob, Hakuno pulled herself away from his chest and stared at him, reaching a hand to wipe off stray tears away from the corners of her eyes. “Goodness, we’re so fucking dumb,” she said, irritated that something so simple had eluded her for so long, but her brother just smiled at that.

"Speak for yourself,” he snorted without real malice, and from the corner of her eyes, she saw him blinking a few times, as if he, as well, was trying to keep together a half-broken dam of grief, but the conversation stopped short after that, and with a weary sigh he kept it all underneath.

There was still that uncomfortable sense of wrongness tugging at the back of her mind, still trying to pull her towards the moon, but she reeled it in. Her head nestled against the crook of his neck as the two silently sat on the sand and watched the moon, its reflection bright on the water's surface, and the serenity of it all was enough that she even managed to forget her feelings of unease, if only for a moment.

The gentle, warm breeze of late August blew in, laced with the scent of the sea. She listened to the waves crashing on the coarse sand, and breathed in the scent of salinized water.

They stayed there a good while longer, speaking of distant cities bathed in gold, mountains made of sand and memories buried deep within until they were exhausted enough to go back.

* * *

A round, full moon hung outside on the sky. Catching a glimpse of its light, he had an unpleasant premonition.

It's bad tonight, worse than he remembers ever being. He can't stay inside any longer. The atmosphere is oppressive, and remaining indoors made it all the more unpleasant.

_Keep control._

The world didn’t feel right. The moon was calling —and for Ur-Nungal, its calling always felt like a deep descent into the unknown, to the edge of emptiness. He can feel it as he walks through now emptied halls, searching and searching but never finding. Clairvoyance was as much of a blessing as it was a curse. The visions twist and bend, and like a kaleidoscope, none of them form a clear image that he can grasp at. He should have known that divination wouldn't be so simple. His father should have told him that much, but then again, he was already far too preoccupied trying to work himself to oblivion, and in keeping with family tradition, Ur-Nungal was arrogant and reckless to the point of self-destruction, so he never bothered asking.

_I’ll be sure to find someone at the end of this path of corpses._

He finds his way somewhere outside, the warm breeze caressing his skin, and with his eyes closed, he instinctively opens his arms to embrace the moon. It was a full moon tonight, and when he does, he can almost feel the person he knew should be there —only there wasn’t anything physical for him to wrap his arms around, and only the sickening feeling of absence remained. Ur-Nungal knows; there should be someone else here -not his father, not Siduri, not any of the servants that roam the palace nor the many concubines, never enough to quite satisfy, that tried to paw at his father for a chance to make their way into the throne, ensnared like moths to a flame, but someone like him, someone that would remind him how to breathe so that he won't have to go through this alone, sleepwalking in the middle of the night, trying to find his way back home.

_Keep control._

Vaguely, he thinks, there was someone just like that.

Once.

He tries to move closer to that celestial light, and for a split second, through the discordant noise of thousands of other souls, he feels that calm presence he used to reach for as a child. Just a little bit more, and he thinks he might be able to reach for it soon enough.

" _Mother_?" he tries to call out, but it falls on deaf ears, his voice echoing back at him.

_Someone…_

It’s strange. The spiritual pull that he feels from his father is nowhere near that overpowering, and it makes him wonder if either the old man was getting weaker or if the connection he felt to the moon and what lays beyond its silvery path is not a testament of his own magical prowess, but a symptom of an old malady. He knew from eavespoking conversations he shouldn’t that there was a family predisposition to illness, from his lost mother's part at least, however…

_Anyone…_

He opens his eyes, and finds nothing. The pale light of the moon, he comes to realize, offers paltry comfort, and only then, when he is about to head back to sleep it off, the vision returns full force with a rising murmur, and he finds himself closing his eyes again, trying to see what lays beyond, if only to try give whatever is trying to reach for him a place to find peace in his embrace.

The voice is unfamiliar, distant and increasingly further away as seconds pass, but beckoning, and he sees it; a strange but achingly familiar figure standing alone in the darkness, in a space between ‘here’ and ‘there’, but even as he stares at them, the figure is already slowly receding, disappearing from view as his grasp on the vision becomes weaker. A God, perhaps, but the vision is retreating and he can’t tell.

He has to try _harder_.

“ _Wait!_ ” he calls suddenly inside his mind, a sense of urgency that he couldn’t recognize in himself. “ _How do I get back?_ ”

The figure pauses, as if in thought. “ _Didn't he teach you_?”

“… _Teach me?”_

His question goes unanswered. Instead, the voice turns discordant and whispers something he won't understand for many years.

“… _It's just as I thought._ _You’re just like her,”_ they say with a slight pang of sadness. _"I wish you weren't the same. I'm so sorry."_

He wants to call out again for the figure to wait, but before he can they disappear out of reach, through a path he has no idea where it will lead him should he decide to follow, but he doesn't care, so he tries to follow; this person ahead is showing the way, after all.

Now he can hear another voice joining to the cacophony of distorted melodies, screeching, whispering, echoing. There were also footsteps, _running footsteps_ , and suddenly, before he’s given the opportunity to react, there is a hand enclosing around his wrist, hard enough to bruise, and he’s pushed away from the pale fluorescence of the moon and its snaring pull.

All of his visions crumble with just that single touch, and he opens his eyes again.

The honey-blond felt the gears of his mind slowly beginning to turn as he slips slowly back into consciousness, becoming aware of his surroundings as the visions recede, returning to the nothingness they came from. The scenery that greets him is not that of the full moon or of a shadowy and vaguely familiar figure waiting for him there, but that of two very much familiar glowing red orbs looking down on him in the most menacing way he’s ever seen them being directed on him.

_How did I get here, now?_

He begins to sort his thoughts and memories only to find that there was a missing gap between the moment he went to sleep and the moment he unwillingly stepped outside his bedchambers in search for the closest spot to the moon, following after a vision and a hunch. 

_That’s problematic_ , he thinks. _You should remember_ , a voice insists, but then another that he recognizes as his own whispers quietly, _don't look there_. _It's unpleasant._

So he doesn’t.

“Oh.” He groans unpleasantly as his eyes meet his. “But what a lovely sight to come back to from one’s deep musings. Can I go back to being dead again? Please?”

Apparently, his father couldn’t appreciate his taste in humor, because if anything, that only makes him look more aggravated. Truly a real shame.

“You are such a liability,” his father hisses at him, his grip on his wrist tightening as he looks him in the eye with a terrible gaze, eyes flashing scarlet as if he held the entire rage of Kigal inside his pupils, just waiting to be unleashed.

“Oh, am I now?” he smiles smugly to himself, pleased that words so simple could warrant him such undulated attention. “How long have you been there, waiting for the right opportunity to strike me?”

Granted, this is perhaps not his proudest moment, but here under the silver full moon and with his father looking like he was about to have a conniption because of him, Ur-Nungal felt oddly pleased with himself. It was something that he quickly found out; while sound was a very effective way to get attention - any attention-, actions always spoke louder. He never grew out of that, tough, and looking back on it, perhaps spending that much time nursing his bitterness probably played an important part on that. However, it's also true that nothing brings a sense of motivation the way a lust for revenge does, but the old man before him has grown senile, having become this strange and distant authority figure no one could quite figure out what it was he needed that could please him, and he can no longer see things the same way he does. Again, Ur-Nungal thinks, it is a pity.

“None of your cunning, boy; do not think I don’t know what you were attempting. No matter your age, you will always be the same foolish little boy, always pushing buttons-”

“—You couldn’t possibly know what I was even attempting to do.”

A derisive snort.

"Do not flatter yourself. Clairvoyance or not, you are not so hard to read; anyone who looks at you long enough would know, and I know better than to assume you’re not being the antagonist. You're up to something else."

Feeling suddenly patronized, he bites back,

“…You _do_ know, they are mine to do as I please,” he retorts, testing, but it’s not a ‘no’. “Is that such a _crime_?”

But Gilgamesh doesn't even blink, doesn't so much as yield. If anything, Ur-Nungal is sure he's seen his father’s eyes grow even colder, and if he so desired, he most probably would be able to suck the oxygen out of the Earth, adamant on acting on whatever better judgement he thought was worth pursuing.

“You are not using them, you are misusing them, you fool. But of course, like the child that you are, you wouldn’t know any better than—,” he starts to say tersely in return, but since his father’s explanations tend to get extremely long once he gets started, sometimes it's best to just cut him off before things get out of hand. It is exactly what he does at the moment.

“—Is it so painful to admit that someone else puts your logic to shame?” he cuts him off, staring up with sharp eyes, giving him the kind of look one who knew more things that they ought to would give another who didn’t. “The night of the full moon has come, I have indulged in my power, but I am still here. No harm done.”

In a way, by using his abilities in morally ambiguous ways, he was keeping family traditions alive.

He wonders if his father will take the bait. He kind of wishes he did, but he went unanswered, in the end. His father searches for something in his face. Ur-Nungal can’t say he knows what he’s searching for; perhaps he is trying to come up with a rebuke, perhaps he’s searching for a deeper answer to something else that the ever-proud clairvoyant King had not been able to find on his own.

Instead, he settles with telling him, voice but a murmur, "you are, without a doubt, the most infuriating spoiled child I have ever had the misfortune of siring.”

Tasting triumph, Ur-Nungal lets himself smirk, but it doesn’t reach his eyes -the same soft and shining mahogany color of his mother's pretty hair that his father can't stand to look at. 

“Oh, but what can I say —every decision I make, I make in an effort to make your existence mis—” he tries to make it sound light, but then, all of a sudden— "Wha— hey!" Ur-Nungal squawks, finding himself suddenly upside-down as his father took him in his arms and carried him over his shoulder.

"Quiet, you. And stop squirming or I'll drop you,” he threatens, leading him back to his room. “Come now, it is past your curfew.”

And he had no other choice but to let himself be carried back —only he wasn’t being taken back to his own bedchamber’s, the path taken different from that which he had memorized by heart, and only then realizing that he was being carried to his father’s private quarters, and it all was… disquieting. It shouldn’t be making him feel sick, but it does.

The place itself felt familiar and unfamiliar all at once. Even though he knows he can’t trust his memory, there is a sense of remembrance to it. He can’t say he remembers staying there, but he does remember, at some point of his short life, passing quickly through the doors, hurrying to return to his own quarters to pull his pelts up over himself tightly so that he wouldn't hear something he didn't want to.

He is brought down rather unceremoniously, and his body falls on soft pelts cushioning his descent with a slight bounce. It is seconds later after he is covered with them that there is another weight there as well, his father having taken a seat at the edge of the bed only to reach a hand to ruffle his uncombed, wheat colored hair. When had been the last time this ever happened? Again, he can’t tell, but against his better judgement, and perhaps because he knows how fragile of a moment it is, he lets it happen and leans back into the touch, eyes closed. A silence drags for some moments before he started to hum a nonsense tune under his breath, expression peaceful, trying to let sleep lay its claim on him. 

However, his father was not helping his cause.

"Where did you hear that?" Gilgamesh asks to fill the awkward gap, perhaps a tad too fast because he takes notice of the missed notes of his voice, like a harp breaking a string, and this too, strangely enough, breaks something within him. His eyes are still closed, so he can’t see what sort of expression he’s making.

"At the end of a deep cave," Ur-Nungal says, "there was a person I wanted to follow, but they disappeared before I could. They sang it."

"Who?" he presses.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you even know the meaning of what you’re singing?”

He clicks his tongue.

“Does it _even_ matter? It’s just a tune.”

Gilgamesh makes a sound like he was almost personally offended by this, which by all means should be ridiculous.

“What special breed of _fool_ sings a song without knowing what it means?”

Feeling irked, he opens his tired eyes and sits up to properly glare back at him.

“ _This_ kind of fool?”

Then, Gilgamesh opens his mouth to further argue on that, and says…

and says…

"…Foolish boy. Have you been crying?" he asks, almost inaudibly.

…Had he?

He tries to look affronted in front of him, like he was appalled he would even ask such a thing, the notion itself completely absurd, but that is before he looks at his father, looks at his absolutely exhausted demeanor and wonders if he has always looked this way -if his hands had always felt this rough and calloused, if the dark circles under his eyes had always been that prominent, and in the case they had been, when did it even began.

It is in that moment of silent befuddlement that he feels a familiar choking feeling welling up inside of him again, ill-concealed emotion surfacing on the brims of his eyes, and he’s lost; when he feels his father brush across the corner of his eye and realizes that the wetness on his fingertip is indeed a tear, it all becomes cold certainty.

He would have tried to avoid the impending question of _why are you crying_ , had it not been too late already; his father, he knows that much, is unyielding. Another hot tear rolls down his own cheek, and a shaky breath comes out of his trembling lips.

"I—” He shakes his head slowly, faltering as if he couldn’t remember how he was supposed to continue. “—I’ve seen the empty," Ur-Nungal says finally, voice awfully melancholic for someone so young, barely fourteen, and lets out a little laugh at his confession. "And I went somewhere. And beyond that eternity of nothingness, I saw someone waiting where the moon is," he continues, his voice cracking ever so slightly. He tries to think of a way to say how it felt without ending up blabbering incoherence, longing for something lost. “A king does never falter; it is what you said, but… I cannot control it; I keep trying to make it go quiet, and it never does. What if I'm still ‘there’? And what if someday, I don’t find the way back?”

He’s not sure what he’s expecting, but he’s expecting something out of him. At this point, any word would do.

But Gilgamesh says… nothing to that; he’s making a face that does nothing to ease Ur-Nungal any further, studying him with a mixture of bottled emotions written upon his features, and as if horror had robbed him of his voice, he merely leans his face closer to his son’s. One hand cupped each cheek, and pressed a kiss to Ur-Nungal’s cheek before closing his eyes, leaning their foreheads together for a brief moment of complacent silence, making Ur-Nungal’s heart ache and his stomach clench all at once, only now realizing, in that small moment of respite, that he was always holding back with him -never angry enough to deeply mean it.

Ur-Nungal swallowed a lump in his throat, unsure if the rising sickness that he felt came from the fact this was the closest to not being a complete neglectful douchebag that his father has ever been, or the fact that, strangely enough, this almost felt like they were about to depart, and in that moment of hesitation, his whole face contorted suddenly. His shaking hands came to rest around his back, clenching with terrible strength, and Gilgamesh held him as tightly, stroking his hair.

It became awfully silent, after that, metaphorically and literally. As he was swept into his father’s bleak embrace, the latter climbing back on the bed, it was as if the ever-present white-noise in his head had suddenly gone completely silent as well, if only for one blessed moment.

Memories are treacherous things. If he had been inquired on when was the last time he was tucked in by his father, he wouldn’t be able to tell exactly just how young he was other than young enough that his father would think he wouldn’t remember. He thinks, even, that the last time he’s ever slept on the same bed as his father he was but a babe, because no other memory of that resurfaces no matter how hard he tries to grasp for one.

As much as he doesn’t want to, he takes both his father’s hands between his and holds them tight as he falls asleep.

The oblivion he craved blesses him with its presence once again.

How lovely.

How considerate.

"… _Then_ , _let's meet again_ ," a voice, his own, calls in the distance. " _When dusk falls and the moon makes its ascent to the heavens once again, we'll find each other again._ "

How… _blissful_.

For as long as he could remember, there's always been something missing, and when he caught furtive glimpses of the moon’s reflection, Ur-Nungal instinctively turned towards it, like a moth to a flame. Something tugs inside him and it probably always will, but time marched on, inescapable, unavoidable, and in the end, whatever lingering memories that still remained ended up softening until they became a blur; nothing but a distant echo of a time that long since passed to memory.

**Author's Note:**

> Today I bring you (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ c r i p p l i n g d e p r e s s i o n*:･ﾟ✧
> 
> I guess.
> 
> I'm so sorry.


End file.
